Day: October 4, 2010

He was a last-minute substitute into the semifinals, and Sammy Obeid took advantage of it. He has made the finals of the 2010 San Francisco Comedy Competition, which begin Tuesday in Mill Valley. Your final five for the 35th annual edition of the stand-up contest, in alphabetical order: Tony Dijamco, Los Angeles Solomon Georgio, Seattle Sammy Obeid, Fremont Auggie Smith, Portland Kurt Swann, San...

"You don't consider Curb Your Enthusiasm legit? What do you want from me? Directors chairs, us sitting with Matt Lauer asking questions?" — Jerry Seinfeld, responding to an audience member's question about a "legit" Seinfeld reunion, after he dropped in for a surprise stand-up set at the Comedy Cellar over the...

Perhaps you have seen a clip or two of Christine O'Donnell, Delware's GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, saying a weird thing or two on the TV. Bill Maher has promised to reach into his vaults and release even more blasts from her past until O'Donnell agrees to face Maher on his HBO show. Well, here's another clip package, courtesy of fans of comedian Todd Glass, who sat beside O'Donnell in a June 23, 2000, episode of Politically Incorrect. Marion Ross and Eric Braeden occupied the two other guest chairs. In these excerpts, O'Donnell gets Glass going by complaining about how men objectify women, claiming: "I can walk down the street in a burlap sack with a bag over my head, and someone will yell stuff out the window." Glass immediately replied: "Oh, c'mon! I don't believe that…That's a little self-fulfilling, I think!" Watch and download the full exchange at this link. Or, now also on...

We're only a month away from the New York Comedy Festival, which means it's time for the city's funniest up-and-coming stand-up comedians to put their best punchlines forward in competition for the title of "New York's Funniest Stand-Up." Past winners include Myq Kaplan, Julian McCullough and Wil Sylvince. This year, you don't have to stand outside of Carolines and brave the weather in Times Square for who knows how long just for a chance to audition. That's because we have Internet. Or, should I write, Carolines and the festival have set up an online "open call" audition process. No lines this year. Here's how the process will work (straight from the festival folk): Email the following to nysfunniest@gmail.com: Your full name; Your cell phone number; When, between 10 am and 4 pm, you‚Äôd like to audition, and a URL link to a video of you doing stand up (can be YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) Send in applications by Sunday, Oct. 17. Audition spots will be posted on nysfunniest.tumblr.com on Monday, Oct. 18, with auditions held at Carolines between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 20. Each comic should prepare 2 minutes of their best material for the audition. Thirty comics will perform in the semifinals on Wednesday, Oct. 27 at Carolines. Finals are Tuesday, Nov. 2 at Carolines. Winner gets cash, another slot in the festival and more!...

In the mid-1990s, comedian Jessie Baade (aka Jessie Robles) attempted a documentary on comedy. It did not get finished. But Baade still had the video of her 1994 interview with Greg Giraldo, then just two years into his stand-up career. It's not always easy to watch. Giraldo isn't sure how seriously to take Baade's interview, which makes some of the answers and joke-answers come off much differently now, and there's plenty of background bar noise because a Jets game is on the bar's TVs. Here is how Baade described the video: "Greg let me interview him when I told him him I was working on a project about comics while we were hanging out at Chuckles in Mineola, Long Island NY around late 1994. It never got finished because his was the only thing that didn't turn out to be in the dark. Jim Gaffigan is there off camera which is why Giraldo kept making cracks about him. He did not, in actuality, think Gaffigan was a hack." Thanks to friend Nick Zaino, who covers the Boston comedy scene, for...